With video games now being a mainstream fixture in more ways than one, it's safe to presume that a large majority of people–including non-gamers–would at least be able to name some of the medium's most popular titles if given the chance. After all, a study done by the ESA in 2015 found that a little more than half of the US population plays video games, and that number has likely grown since. As a matter of fact, even some of the entertainment industry's most famed figures are avid gamers, including the prolific director John Carpenter, who recently expressed an interest in scoring a game.
During a recent interview, Carpenter sat down to discuss his Halloween franchise as a whole, including the soundtrack he provided for David Gordon Green's 2018 entry in the series. Talking about the topic of crafting music eventually led to him saying that he wanted to branch out from composing for movies and score a video game. Regarding the matter, Carpenter said:
"I think there’s a part of me that’s dying to do a game score, I’m just dying to do it, but I don’t think anybody will hire me. No one thinks about me to do music for games, [but] that’d be great!"
For those unaware, Carpenter revealed about a year ago that he is a dedicated player of Destiny 2, which makes one wonder if he's managed to keep up with all of the science fiction shooter's latest updates until now, including its newest expansion in the Black Armory DLC. Whatever the case may be there, it definitely indicates that his skills as a composer who games allows him to have a solid understanding of how certain titles are paced, and how they rely on a soundtrack to emphasize and underscore moments in-game. This alone would make him a great candidate for almost any developer's project.
All things considered, it remains to be seen if Carpenter will ever have his wish fulfilled to score a video game. However, there's no doubt that his credentials with the superb soundtracks for his movies like Halloween, The Thing, and Escape from New York–the latter of which served as an influence for Hideo Kojima's Metal Gear Solid series–makes him more than qualified to do so. Maybe one day in the near future, though, we will see Carpenter providing the soundtrack for a big AAA hit.
John Carpenter's latest original motion picture soundtrack is for 2018's Halloween, which is set to release digitally on December 28, 2018, and on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray, Blu-ray, and DVD on January 15, 2019.
Source: Consequence of Sound
Image Source: Nathan Hartley Maas via Wikimedia (Creative Commons license)